The inspirations and origins for our stories.
Kelly Sandoval’s story “The Otherside of Memory” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 9 April 2021. I grew up on portal fantasies. I loved The Labyrinth, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Peter Pan. I wanted more than anything to disappear through a wardrobe, or a painting, and find myself somewhere else. Somewhere special. But even as a kid, there were elements of the stories that bothered me. Especially Narnia. The characters live out their lives …
David Hammond’s story “The Big S” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 2 April 2021. This story started with me thinking about the current state of drug therapies for depression. Basically, I wished antidepressants worked better. That wish segued naturally into a series of escalating thought experiments: What if there were a cure for depression? What if that cure didn’t just affect clinical depression, but ordinary sadness, and it were given to everyone? What if, …
Esem Junior’s story “Siberia in Four Dimensions” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 26 March 2021. It only took me a couple decades since high school to revisit the theory of relativity and, once I absorbed it with a more fully formed brain, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Meanwhile, no discussion of relativity can take place without reference to black holes and, lost one evening in a Möbius Strip of internet links, I came …
Chris Cornetto’s story “Sanctuary” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 19 March 2021. One reason I write short stories is to flesh out the world of the novels I one day hope to publish. “Sanctuary” began as an exploration of certain characters’ roots (Abby’s child among them), but it quickly became a philosophical exercise. To write this story, I had to consider how a totalitarian society controls its citizens. There are certain obvious techniques we …
Martin Westlake’s story “Going Home” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 12 March 2021. In the first place, ‘Going Home’ is drawn from, and is a conflation of, a number of lived experiences and/or curiosities that have fascinated me over the years. The strange tale of the Ekranoplan, developed in Soviet Russian times and then abandoned; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Nu94khHoo The howl of the Avro Vulcan bomber – once heard as a child and never forgotten; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1igQoRqpBA The …
V.G. Campen’s story “Spells for Going Forth by Day” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 5 March 2021. Some years ago, from the window of a passenger train traveling the eastern US, I watched a jackal trot across a shallow creekbed and disappear into waist-high marsh grass. In reality it was likely a stray dog, or possibly a coyote, as jackals are not native to North America. But the idea of a jackal living alone …
